Getting acquainted with your food

Is that can good for you? 10 things to know when reading a food label

Image: Jon Tyson

Food labels carry useful information for the informed reader. That may sound like a joke but it’s not. Most of us have casually tried to decipher the meaning of all those strange words and numbers on the back of a processed food item but gave up with little to show for it.

Most packaged foods are required to have a label with all sorts of information, including their ingredients, nutritional value, weights and measures, date, directions for use and storage, allergens, and more. Scroll down and learn more about these valuable details!

Image: Shannon VanDenHeuvel

Foods with a shelf life of less than two years must have a best-before or use-by date. But, while it sounds similar, these terms mean different things. The best-before date refers to food quality: food stored in the recommended way will remain of good quality until that date. Once the best-before date has passed, the food may still be safe to consume, but it may have lost some quality and nutritional value.

On the other hand, products with a use-by date on food labels should not be consumed after a certain date for health and safety reasons must-have a use-by date. This means they cannot be sold after that date.

Image: Dan Gold

Every label worth its salt must have its ingredients listed in descending order by weight, including added water. The first ingredient listed is present in the largest amount by weight, and the last one listed is present in the least amount by weight.

If an ingredient makes up less than 5% of the food, it does not have to be listed. However, this 5% rule does not apply to any additive or allergen. These must be listed no matter how small the amount.

Image: Joshua Fernandez

Food additives can be used to improve the quality of a food or improve the flavour or appearance of a food. They must be used in the lowest possible quantity to achieve their purpose. These substances are included in the ingredient list according to their class and purpose (for example, anti-caking agent).

In most cases, a chemical name or food additive number will be listed after the class. For example, enzymes and most flavourings only need to list their class name or number. Luckily, the same food additive numbering system is used throughout the world.

Image: Benjamin Cheng

The nutrition information panel tells the quantity of various nutrients a food contains per serve, as well as per 100 g or 100 ml. That serving size is determined by the manufacturer and will often vary among products.

This panel lists the energy content, proteins, total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, and sodium. Very small packages and foods like herbs, spices, salt, tea and coffee, or single-ingredient foods don´t need to show this information.

Image: Mockup Free

This one is tricky. The terms used by manufacturers present their products in a very positive light, even when there is no real value to be found.

For example, the term ‘light’ or ‘lite’ doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is low in fat, but it may refer to the texture, colour or taste of the product. If an item claims to be 93% fat-free, it contains 7% fat, but it looks so much better the other way. ‘Baked not fried’ sounds healthier, but it may still have just as much fat.

Image: Eric Prouzet

Percentage Daily Intake (%DI) symbols display a product’s nutrient amount as one serving, and the percentage of an average adult’s requirements that it provides.

These symbols display energy, and other nutrients, like fat, sugars, sodium, carbohydrates, protein and a vitamin or mineral.

Keep in mind that %DI is based on serving size and, since serving sizes vary as they are set by manufacturers, it can be difficult to use when comparing products.

Image: YesMore Content

Perhaps the most important item on this list is the information about food allergies or intolerance. Foods or ingredients that may cause severe adverse reactions must be declared on the label no matter how small the amount.

Common foods that may cause allergies are peanuts and other nuts, fish and shellfish, milk, eggs, wheat, sesame seeds and soy, among others. Gluten-containing cereals also need to be declared on food labels for people with conditions like celiac disease.

Image: P. L.

This type of labelling details where the product was grown, produced, made or packaged. Most packaged food must have a country of origin label if it's sold in a retail setting, such as a supermarket, local store or market, online or from a vending machine.

Image: Shayna Douglas

Different types of sugar have different names. Food manufacturers may use this to their advantage by purposely adding many different types of sugar to their products to hide the actual amount and, by doing so, they can list a healthier ingredient at the top, mentioning sugar further down. So even though a product may be loaded with sugar, it doesn’t necessarily appear as one of the first three ingredients.

To avoid inadvertently consuming a lot of sugar, watch out for any ingredients with the word "sugar", or "syrup", on their composed names.

Image: Mockup Free

In the same way it happens with sugar, sodium also can be disguised under many different names. For example, there’s salt, sodium benzoate, disodium or monosodium glutamate, to name a few.

This is important to know because too much sodium can raise blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day.

Tech, decoded

You've been overthinking tech: These terms prove it

Picture this: you're at dinner with family, and someone says, "Oh, it's slow because of the bandwidth—you should really set up 2FA on that account." Everyone nods. You nod too, mostly to avoid follow-up questions. Sound familiar? Here's the thing: this stuff is actually useful in today's modern life, and you do not need to be a tech expert to get it. Stick with us through these explanations, and you'll walk away with the kind of knowledge that comes in handy more often than you'd think.

Think of bandwidth like a highway. A two-lane road can only handle so many cars at once—but a twelve-lane highway? Traffic flows freely. Bandwidth works the same way: the higher your bandwidth, the more data your internet connection can handle at the same time, and the faster everything feels. It's why streaming a movie, video-calling the grandkids, and checking email all at once can slow things down.

The average American household now uses about 500 GB of data per month: roughly equal to streaming 166 full-length movies.

Encryption is the process of scrambling data into a secret code that only the intended recipient can decode. Think of it like sending a letter written in a language only you and the receiver know; even if someone intercepts it, it's gibberish to them.

Every time you shop online or log into your bank, encryption is working quietly in the background to protect your information. Military-grade encryption used for online banking would take a regular computer longer than the age of the universe to crack by brute force.

A cache is like your browser's memory for things it's seen before: When you visit a website, your device quietly saves pieces of it—images, buttons, layout—so the next time you go back, it doesn't have to download everything again from scratch. It's the digital equivalent of leaving your reading glasses on the nightstand instead of searching the whole house every morning.

If a website looks funny or outdated, someone might tell you to "clear your cache." That just means wiping that saved memory so your browser fetches a fresh version.

Latency is the tiny gap between when you do something, like saying a word on a video call, and when the other side hears it. Low latency means things feel instant and snappy. High latency means you're talking over someone on Zoom, and it takes a couple of seconds for the other person to hear it.

The human brain detects audio delay at around 20 milliseconds: about the same time it takes to blink.

An API—Application Programming Interface—sounds terrifying, but the concept is simple. Imagine you're at a restaurant. You don't go into the kitchen and cook your food; you tell the waiter what you want, and the waiter brings it back. An API does the same thing between software programs: it carries requests from one app to another and brings back the answer.

Your weather app doesn't collect its own weather data; it asks a weather service through an API.

"The cloud" sounds mysterious, but it's really just someone else's computer: a very big, very powerful one in a data center somewhere. When you save a photo to iCloud or open a Google Doc, that file isn't sitting on your device. It's stored on a server far away, and your internet connection is the bridge that lets you reach it.

The practical benefit? If you drop your phone in a lake, your photos are still safe. Fun fact: The world's cloud data centers use more electricity than the entire United Kingdom—every single day.

Phishing is when a bad actor sends you an email, text, or fake website pretending to be someone you trust, like your bank, Amazon, or the IRS, to trick you into handing over your password or credit card number. It's the digital version of a con man in a suit showing up at your door claiming to be from the gas company. The disguise looks real; the intentions are not.

If something feels off—a weird sender address, urgent scary language, a link that doesn't quite match—trust your gut and don't click.

Malware is short for "malicious software": basically, any program that sneaks onto your device to cause trouble. Some malware spies on what you type. Some lock your files and demand money to release them.

However, a reputable antivirus program and a healthy dose of caution go a long way. Don't click suspicious links. Don't plug in a random USB drive you found. Don't install software from websites you've never heard of.

An algorithm is just a set of instructions that a computer follows to make decisions or solve problems. When Facebook shows you certain posts first, or YouTube suggests a video, an algorithm made that choice. It's studying what you click, what you pause on, what you like, and using all of that to serve up more of the same. It's worth knowing this because it means your feed is a reflection of your behavior.

Want different results? Change your habits: like, comment, or search for different things, and the algorithm quietly shifts.

Two-factor authentication is like having a deadbolt in addition to your regular door lock. Even if someone gets your password, they still can't get in without a second piece of proof, usually a code sent to your phone.

Most apps make it very easy to set up, and the inconvenience is minimal compared to what it protects. Microsoft reports that accounts with 2FA enabled are over 99% less likely to be compromised.

A VPN—Virtual Private Network—is like a secret tunnel your internet traffic travels through instead of the open road. When you use one, your data is encrypted and routed through a server somewhere else, hiding your real location and making it much harder for anyone to snoop on what you're doing online.

VPNs are especially useful on public Wi-Fi, like at the airport or a coffee shop, where your connection could otherwise be visible to strangers on the same network. It's not magic, it just makes your device look like it's somewhere it isn't.

A software update is a new, improved version of a program or operating system. Updates don't just add new features; they often patch security holes that hackers have already discovered and are actively trying to exploit. Ignoring them is a bit like knowing your back door lock is broken and deciding you'll fix it next weekend.

Updating your phone or computer software takes a few minutes, and it's one of the simplest things you can do to protect yourself online.